Factorio Forums

I played around with combinators for the first time today, so bear with me if I overlooked something obvious.

Combinators allow complicated automation but so far only based on events occurring in the game (like a resource running out). I think it would be practical to have a simple interaction mechanism for the player.
So what I'm suggesting is a switch-like combinator. It's fairly similar to the constant combinator, in that it only has an output. However it has two states, which can be switched by the player simply by clicking (or right-clicking or duple clicking or whatever) on it. So if it is “on” it will output all the signals specified for the first state, and if it is “off” it'll output the signals specified for the second state.

There are currently many ways to simulate this, e.g. have a constant combinator output more/less than a certain amount of something. Somewhere I saw a contraption that switches based on rotating an inserter. I think there were other setups as well. All of them try to create a simple player interaction with as little opening inventories etc. as possible.

Also while we're on the subject of player-network interaction, I hope the idea of a custom alert created from within the network hasn't been forgotten.

Let me know what you think or if I overlooked something.

I'm afraid normal user-input CCnet devices are still missing.

For you, a minecraft lever would be the best.

The problem:
So, Factorio has all these neat things you can do with arithmetic and decider combinators, but it doesn't have a manually operated circuit switch. Before anything else, I know I'm not the greatest builder in all of Factorio, but I can say with certainty that the lack of manual input is holding back a lot of the potential of what you can do with combinators.

The current way around the problem:
What I found out for myself is that using a combinator in conjunction with a power switch, which wastes so much space.
I know this is a really bad source, from what I have seen on Youtube, people are using things like shooting objects to have bots repair them and uses that as a signal, and it works.
Please, I know it takes time and development, but I hope that a switch and/or button is added before the game goes out of beta.

Thanks for reading, stay awesome.

This thread is also releated:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44435 Lever and Button

Currently we do have on/off switch on a constant combinator. It can serve as a solution for the mentioned task. However it lacks more obvious in-world interface.
However we really do miss a single pulse button.

Workaround: Constant combinator with the desired value on it, toggle on/off at will.
Second workaround: Constant combinator with the desired value on it, and a blank one. Ctrl/shift-rightclick to copy the blank and desired values also emulates this on/off function.

Third workaround, for gating multiple signals, assuming all signals are above an arbitrary value:
Red wire in: Signals that need to be gated. Red wire out: Signals that are gated
Green wire in: Signal "Z" (must not be included in the gated signals). Green wire out: Not connected.
Configuration: "EACH > -1000 = EACH"
Toggle a constant combinator Z = -1000 on the green wire to switch off any gated signals. You can control multiple manual cutoffs simultaneously with this.

That said, Factorio is about automating the crap out of everything. Not sure why you'd want manual switches.

PacifyerGrey wrote:However we really do miss a single pulse button.

I fully agree. It would be nice if a constant combinator also had a "pulse" button, which would only turn it on for a single tick.